Big Players Are Busy Withdrawing Stablecoins Worth IDR 62 Trillion from the Crypto Exchange

JAKARTA – Since the collapse of FTX last November, crypto market conditions have been hit, dragging down the decline of most cryptocurrencies. It recently reported a massive drawdown in stablecoin crypto worth USD 4 billion (or equivalent to IDR 62 trillion).

The withdrawal was made from several leading crypto exchanges, one of which is Binance, which is a rival of FTX. According to a CNN report, on Tuesday, December 15, $3 billion worth of funds had left the Binance crypto exchange. Even so, it does not rule out the possibility that withdrawals will also occur on other crypto exchanges.

For information, stablecoins are cryptocurrencies whose prices are pegged to the value of fiat currencies. Therefore the price is more stable and is not affected by the volatility of the crypto market in general. Those stablecoins include USDT, USDC, BUSD, DAI, and many more.

CryptoSlate recently released a report showing that $4 billion worth of stablecoins has left global crypto exchanges in the past week. That means stablecoin trading volume has been reduced to 38 billion US dollars (equivalent to IDR 593.8 trillion).

The data that CryptoSlate analysts describe is based on data from STBL, a virtual asset that aggregates data from all stablecoins on the Ethereum ERC20 network. It aims to create metrics that can reflect stablecoin balances across all crypto exchanges.

Furthermore, STBL includes Binance USD (BUSD), Gemini Dollar (GUSD), HUSD (HUSD), DAI (DAI), Paxos Standard (USDP), Stasis Euro (EURS), SAI (SAI), Synthetix USD (sUSD), Tether (USDT), and USD Coin (USDC). STBL collects stablecoin data from crypto exchange companies since 2018.

According to the report, the exchange started accumulating stablecoins with significant increases in January 2021. Growth has been more or less steady since then, barring a few dips during late 2021 and 2022.

The chart also shows the visible draws noted over the last week. Exchange users bought about $4 billion worth of stablecoins and removed them from the exchange portfolio.

In the crypto market, there are many circulating stablecoins as mentioned above. However, there is only one stablecoin that has the highest trading volume and market capitalization, namely USDT.

This stablecoin from Tether has a market cap of USD 66 billion (more than IDR 1 quadrillion). USDT also has a higher trading volume than other stablecoins, which is worth 23 billion US dollars (equivalent to IDR 367 trillion).

Then, in second place is Circle USDC with a market capitalization of US$45 billion (equivalent to IDR704 trillion). Meanwhile, USDC's trading volume is in the range of US$2.4 billion (IDR36 trillion).

The results of the analysis also reveal data on an increase in USDT balances that have doubled since September 2022. This made USDT cross 17.7 billion US dollars, a higher increase compared to the previous year in September 2021 which was below 8 billion US dollars.

This increase was quite surprising for analysts because USDT began to be released in early 2019. However, in just one year it has experienced high growth from 2021 to 2022. On the other hand, an increase has also occurred in its competitor stablecoin, USDC in early 2022. At that time USDC's market share exceeds 7 billion US dollars. But sadly, in September 2022, its market share had plummeted to 2.1 billion US dollars.